DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61022#0202
ROMAN ART
nor do the peaceful shepherds in the middle distance suggest
either a siege or the approach of an aerolite, and the story may be
dismissed as an irrelevant fabrication which only serves to detract
from the real interest and beauty of the conception.
The ‘ Madonna of Foligno ’ marks, however, only one stage in
the direction of the picture which is acknowledged to be the supreme
embodiment of Raphael’s mature mind and art,—the ‘ Madonna
with St. Sixtus and St. Barbara’ (Plates cxxxin.-cxxxv.), which
was originally painted for an obscure chapel at Piacenza and is now
at Dresden. Raphael’s rigid logic had shown itself in the choice of
decorative forms for the Stanze and in the purely human treatment
of the Madonna and Child, whether they were set in a country
landscape or the interior of a room. Here it succeeds in eliminat-
ing from the representation of the Madonna in Glory every
remnant of the conventional grouping and leaves nothing but the
central idea of the vision. The adorers of the ‘ Foligno Madonna ’
are partly swept away and partly translated themselves into an
imaginary sphere. With this, the artifice of the golden glory
disappears, for the Madonna and Christ have become in them-
selves so central and enthralling that they can suffuse and pene-
trate through the whole picture without requiring any artificial
harmoniser in idea or colour. The angels, also, whose heads and
bodies composed the sky in the ‘Madonna of Foligno,’ as they do
in the ‘ Disputa,’ close in upon the Madonna and at the same time
recede into the distance, while the putto at the foot becomes less
definite and less obtrusive until only two angel heads remain at
the very edge of the painting as a decorative touch and as a key-
note in the representation of the space. Nothing then remains in
the picture but the Virgin and the Child themselves, two attendant
saints, a vague background of angels and two putti at the foot.
Thus the vision of the earliest painters of all returned to art, com-
prising nothing but the essential elements of the conception, and
disregarding all the elaborate scaffolding of accessory and detail
which had enabled the intervening ages to lead up to such perfec-
180
nor do the peaceful shepherds in the middle distance suggest
either a siege or the approach of an aerolite, and the story may be
dismissed as an irrelevant fabrication which only serves to detract
from the real interest and beauty of the conception.
The ‘ Madonna of Foligno ’ marks, however, only one stage in
the direction of the picture which is acknowledged to be the supreme
embodiment of Raphael’s mature mind and art,—the ‘ Madonna
with St. Sixtus and St. Barbara’ (Plates cxxxin.-cxxxv.), which
was originally painted for an obscure chapel at Piacenza and is now
at Dresden. Raphael’s rigid logic had shown itself in the choice of
decorative forms for the Stanze and in the purely human treatment
of the Madonna and Child, whether they were set in a country
landscape or the interior of a room. Here it succeeds in eliminat-
ing from the representation of the Madonna in Glory every
remnant of the conventional grouping and leaves nothing but the
central idea of the vision. The adorers of the ‘ Foligno Madonna ’
are partly swept away and partly translated themselves into an
imaginary sphere. With this, the artifice of the golden glory
disappears, for the Madonna and Christ have become in them-
selves so central and enthralling that they can suffuse and pene-
trate through the whole picture without requiring any artificial
harmoniser in idea or colour. The angels, also, whose heads and
bodies composed the sky in the ‘Madonna of Foligno,’ as they do
in the ‘ Disputa,’ close in upon the Madonna and at the same time
recede into the distance, while the putto at the foot becomes less
definite and less obtrusive until only two angel heads remain at
the very edge of the painting as a decorative touch and as a key-
note in the representation of the space. Nothing then remains in
the picture but the Virgin and the Child themselves, two attendant
saints, a vague background of angels and two putti at the foot.
Thus the vision of the earliest painters of all returned to art, com-
prising nothing but the essential elements of the conception, and
disregarding all the elaborate scaffolding of accessory and detail
which had enabled the intervening ages to lead up to such perfec-
180